Holiday Wreath

     Hello!  Today's project is one that I originally saw in the Better Homes and Gardens Holiday Crafts magazine.  The sweater and felt poinsettia wreath (pg 100) got my creative juices flowing.  While the magazine did give step-by-step directions I decided to tweak them just a bit. 

     For the base I used a sturdy 8" foam wreath I found at a chain craft store.  I couldn't bare to cut the sleeves off a perfectly good sweater for the fabric base so I chose to use a similar colored felt.  The felt was cut into 1" strips and then wrapped around the foam base.  It was secured with a dot of Tombow Multipurpose Glue (pg 197, $3.95).

      I don't have a poinsettia die and wasn't able to find one at the local craft store so I decided to use the Birds and Blooms Sizzlits die (pg 211, $21.95) instead.  I cut out 50 or 60 (although it felt like thousands!) of little flowers from red felt using my Big Shot.  It was difficult to find the perfect "sandwich" to run the felt through the BS and since the felt is a thicker material I ended up trimming a bit of each flower from the leftover felt.  Once everything was cut out my Sizzlits dies were permanently stained red and the clear cutting pad I was using as the top layer is now permanently warped.  And did I mention that about half way through cutting the flowers a tiny little metal piece of the BS fell out.  I have no idea what it is or where it came from but my Big Shot continues to work as normal so I'm assuming it wasn't a really important piece.  I hope.  Cutting the felt flowers was a bit time consuming but a great project to do while you're watching your soaps!

     The flowers were layered and attached to the wreath with red pearl-head pins.  Not a single stitch was made to create this project - woohoo!  While it doesn't look exactly like the photo in the magazine I'm pretty proud of my little creation!

Tools & Accessories: Big Shot, Birds and Blooms Sizzlits die